Experimental Investigation on Basic Prototype of Solid Propellant Impulsive Microthrusters

A new type of impulsive microthruster and its measurement system were designed for the aim of testing the performance of a basic prototype of solid propellant impulsive microthruster. Two sets of tests were conducted. The tests show that the ignitor and the main charge of the microthruster match well, the dynamic and static capability of the test and mea-surement meets the test requirement and the result is creditable. The measured technical charac-teristics of the microthruster are that the ignition delay time is shorter than 0.3 ms, the total impulse is over 3 N·s, the operational time is shorter than 16 ms and the mass ratio of the thruster is 0.216.